The next meeting of the Clarksville (TN) Civil War Roundtable will be on Wednesday, April 20th in our new home at the Bone & Joint Center, 980 Professional Park Drive, right across the street from Gateway Hospital. This is just off Dunlop Lane and Holiday Drive and only a few minutes east of Governor’s Square mall. The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and is always open to the public. Members please bring a friend or two – new recruits are always welcomed.
OUR SPEAKER AND TOPIC: “Great Panic Prevails: How The Press Reported The Battle Of Nashville”
Nearly 150 years have passed since John Bell Hood's fateful campaign into Middle Tennessee and the demise of his army at the gates of Nashville. While we in the twenty-first century have a rather detailed account, sewn together from decades of archival research and mountains of collected materials, what about Americans – North and South – who were alive at that pivotal moment in time? What did the battle look like to them? Foremost, they turned to their daily and weekly newspapers, gleaning every line for shreds of truth amidst the tangle of rumors. For them, it was in these grey pages where history literally unfolded. What did they see, what were they told, and what did they believe?
Historian and author Thomas Flagel examines this unique perspective of a once thriving medium. In a multimedia review, he retells the story of a population trying to piece together some semblance of reality, while it suffered through a most surreal war.
Thomas Flagel teaches American History at Columbia State Community College. He holds degrees from Loras College, Kansas State University, Creighton University , and has studied at the University of Vienna . Author of books on the Civil War, World War II, and the American Presidency, he is currently working on a volume concerning Abraham Lincoln. Flagel lives in Franklin, Tennessee where he is on the Mayor’s Battlefield Task Force and a board member of the Carter House and the Franklin Civil War Round Table. Originally from Iowa, he has several Civil War veterans among his ancestors, including a great-great-great grandfather from the 2nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry.
We hope you will join us for this informative program by a very gifted speaker.